ST JOHN PAUL II
Romans,
Chapter 13,
Verse 8-10
8 Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
9 The commandments, “You shall not
commit adultery; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,”
and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this saying,
[namely] “You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love
is the fulfillment of the law.
Bishop
Fulton Sheen is one of his weekly addresses in February 1999 entitled
"Truth - Forgotten Ideal” stated:
Submission
is one of the deepest needs of the human heart. After a century and a half of
false liberalism, in which it was denied that anything is true, and that it
makes no difference what you believe, the world reacted to totalitarianism. It
grew tired of its freedom, just as children in progressive schools grow tired
of their license to do whatever they please. Freedom fatigues those who want to
shirk responsibility. Then it is they look for some false god into whose hands
they can throw themselves, so they will never have to think or make decisions
for themselves. Nazism, Fascism, and Communism came into being during the
twentieth century, as a reaction against false liberalism.
Today is also the feast
of Saint John Paul II. He was a man afflicted, he was a man of endurance, he
stresses that Christ is our only hope and he showed us the love of God.
Karol Wojtyla came of age at one of the darkest moments of the
twentieth century. When he was 19 years old and just commencing his university
career, the Nazis rolled through his native Poland and instigated a reign of
terror over the country. Almost immediately, the conquerors decapitated Polish
society, killing the intelligentsia outright or sending them to concentration
camps. All distinctive forms of Polish culture were cruelly suppressed, and the
church was actively persecuted. Young Wojtyla displayed heroic courage by
joining the underground seminary run by the Cardinal of Krakow and by forming a
small company of players who kept Polish literature and drama alive. Many of
his colleagues in both of these endeavors were killed or arrested in the course
of those terrible years of occupation. Sadly, the Nazi tyranny was replaced
immediately by the Communist tyranny, and Fr. Wojtyla was compelled to manifest
his courage again. In the face of harassment, unfair criticism, the threat of
severe punishment, etc., he did his priestly work, forming young people in the
great Catholic spiritual and theological tradition. Even as a bishop, Wojtyla
was subject to practically constant surveillance (every phone tapped; every
room bugged; his every movement tracked), and he was continually, in small ways
and large, obstructed by Communist officialdom. And yet he soldiered on. Of
course, as Pope, he ventured into the belly of the beast, standing athwart the
Communist establishment and speaking for God, freedom, and human rights. In
doing so, he proved himself one of the most courageous figures of the twentieth
century. Karol Wojtyla was a man who exhibited the virtue of justice to a
heroic degree. Throughout his papal years, John Paul II was the single most
eloquent and persistent voice for human rights on the world stage. In the face
of a postmodern relativism and indifferentism, John Paul took the best of the
Enlightenment political tradition and wedded it to classical Christian
anthropology. The result was a sturdy defense of the rights to life, liberty,
education, free speech, and above all, the free exercise of religion. More
persuasively than any other political figure, east or west, John Paul advocated
for justice.
George Weigel titled his magisterial biography of John Paul
II, Witness
to Hope, by identifying Karol Wojtyla with a theological virtue. In
October of 1978, the newly elected Pope John Paul II gave his inaugural speech
to a packed St. Peter’s Square. This man, who had witnessed at first hand the
very worst of the twentieth century, who had intimate experience of how twisted
and wicked human beings can be, spoke over and over again this exhortation: “Be
not afraid.” There was, of course, absolutely no political or cultural warrant
for that exhortation, no purely natural justification for it. It could come
only from a man whose heart was filled with the supernatural sense that the
Holy Spirit is the Lord of history. Finally, was Karol Wojtyla in possession of
love, the greatest of the theological virtues? The best evidence I can bring
forward is the still breathtaking encounter that took place in a grimy Roman
jail cell in December of 1983. John Paul II sat down with Mehmet Ali Agca, the
man who had, only a year and a half before, fired several bullets into the
Pope. John Paul spoke to him, embraced him, listened to him, and finally
forgave him. Love is not a feeling or a sentiment. It is, Thomas
Aquinas reminds us, an act of the will, more precisely, willing the good of the
other. This is why the love of one’s enemies—those who are not
disposed to wish us well—is the great test of love. Did John Paul II express
love in a heroic way? He forgave the man who tried to kill him; no further
argument need be made.
The love of friendship unifies all aspects of marital life and
helps family members to grow constantly. This love must be freely and generously expressed in words and acts. In the
family, “three words need to be used. I
want to repeat this! Three words: ‘Please’, ‘Thank you’, ‘Sorry’. Three
essential words!” “In our
families when we are not overbearing and ask: ‘May I?’; in our families when we
are not selfish and can say: ‘Thank you!’; and in our families when someone
realizes that he or she did something wrong and is able to say ‘Sorry!’, our
family experiences peace and joy.”
Let us not be stingy about using these words, but keep repeating
them, day after day. For “certain silences are oppressive, even at times within
families, between husbands and wives, between parents and children, among
siblings”. The right
words, spoken at the right time, daily protect and nurture love. All this occurs through a process of constant growth.
The very special form of love that is marriage is called to embody what Saint
Thomas Aquinas said about charity in general. “Charity”, he says, “by its very
nature, has no limit to its increase, for it is a participation in that
infinite charity which is the Holy Spirit… Nor on the part of the subject can
its limit be fixed, because as charity grows, so too does its capacity for an
even greater increase”. Saint Paul
also prays: “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another”
(1 Th 3:12), and again, “concerning fraternal love… we urge you,
beloved, to do so more and more” (1 Th 4:9-10). More and more! Marital
love is not defended primarily by presenting indissolubility as a duty, or by
repeating doctrine, but by helping it to grow ever stronger under the impulse
of grace. A love that fails to grow is at risk. Growth can only occur if we
respond to God’s grace through constant acts of love, acts of kindness that
become ever more frequent, intense, generous, tender and cheerful. Husbands and
wives “become conscious of their unity and experience it more deeply from day
to day”. The gift of God’s love poured out upon the spouses is also a summons
to constant growth in grace. It is not helpful to dream of an idyllic and perfect
love needing no stimulus to grow. A celestial notion of earthly love forgets
that the best is yet to come, that fine wine matures with age. As the Bishops
of Chile have pointed out, “the perfect families proposed by deceptive consumerist
propaganda do not exist. In those families, no one grows old, there is no
sickness, sorrow or death… Consumerist propaganda presents a fantasy that has
nothing to do with the reality which
must daily be faced by the heads of families.” It
is much healthier to be realistic about our limits, defects and imperfections, and
to respond to the call to grow together, to bring love to maturity and to
strengthen the union, come what may.
"Read
these counsels slowly. Pause to meditate on these thoughts. They are things
that I whisper in your ear-confiding them-as a friend, as a brother, as a
father. And they are being heard by God. I won't tell you anything new. I will
only stir your memory, so that some thought will arise and strike you; and so
you will better your life and set out along ways of prayer and of Love. And in
the end you will be a more worthy soul."
1 Don't neglect your spiritual reading. —
Reading has made many saints
Daily Devotions
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